at Georgetown University.

I describe it as an emotion that is

particular response to one person,

you love being around that person,

you take a lot of pleasure from being

in their company, and you’re very distressed

when you’re separated from them.

Some of the reasons love feels good is

because of a lot of feel good hormones

that are involved like dopamine, there’s

the sort of reward seeking, it’s energized,

excited, and neurotransmitter.

And the statum, that is definitely

involved in feeling in love.

The hormone that is most specific to

feeling in love that is most specific to

social response is oxytocin, and then a

closely related, neuropeptide called vasopressin.

Nature really wants love to feel good, right?

Nature is imperative is that we reproduce

and love is one of the mechanisms nature

has put in place to make sure that we do that.

This piece is the tender pair bonds and

the ones whose babies require a lot of work.

We know that the offspring you have two

parents who are taking care of them do

better on average than offspring who don’t.

Um, and it’s again because they are so much

work, especially if there’s more one of them.

And so we think the nature set us up

to form long-term pair bonds to ensure

that our offspring would have the best

chance at survival in the long term.

Why Prairie Voles Love And Their Cousins the Montane Voles Do Not.

Prairie Voles are really unique in that,

one male and female prairie vole meet

it seems to sort of solidify the very

long-term bond between them.

And as compared to a lot of other mammals, the

male doesn’t just disappear after they mate.

He sticks around and helps raise the babies

and he stays with the mom usually

for the rest of their lives.

There’s a fairly closely related cousin

called the Montane vole that works

more or less like a Prairie Vole,

and it’s similar in a lot of ways,

but it forms no pair bonds,

they’re what’s called promiscuous.

As soon as they’re made dads, you know

“peace out” that’s the last the mom

will probably see of him. What seems

to be the case is that in Prairie Voles,

they have really dense oxytocin receptors

in regions like Nucleus accumbrens,

when they mate they trigger a flood of

oxytocin to be released, that triggers a

flood of dopamine to be released.

And then you have the Acumbens,

which causes, for example, the female

to find that particular male

really rewarding to be around.

“I like that dude and I would stick with him,”

and… they do.

And you can actually mimic this response,

really wow if you inject oxytocin into

female Prairie Vole, she’ll just seek

to form a bond with any other male

Prairie Vole in the vicinity.

And then if you block oxytocin receptors, you

can total cut off that pair bonding response.

And you’re basically turning Prairie Voles

into Montane Voles, that would be

uninteresting in forming pair bonds,

if you just block the oxytocin receptors.

I think our best guess is that humans

are probably built similar.

It’s that people who excite romantic

feelings in us, probably also trigger

increases in oxytocin, which results in this

increase in dopamine and we find that person

as someone whom we want to stick with.

Love is a Drug

Uh.. there’s absolutely a lot of research,

comparing romantic love to addiction, and

the way that people can be addicted to a

specific drug, romantic love is almost like

being addicted to a specific person.

There are lots of similar neurotransmitters

involved, dopamine being the most prominent,

but there are other ones as well.

There are things about being in love that

are sort of like being addicted,

you are sort obsessed with thinking

about that thing all the time.

When you are away from it you want more.

Your capacity for risk taking to get that

thing you crave so much is increased, and

the main hormone that comes into play is

something called corticotrophin – releasing

factor (CRF). And this is a compound that

seems to spike in the brain, either when you

are separated from the object of love, or if

you’re separated again from your drug of choice.

And this is a hormone that definitely

regulates the stress system, and it seems to be

involved in the acute stress that you feel right

after separating from a loved one and the

depression that seems to think in long terms.

We’re nowhere near knowing enough about love

to take the mystery out of it.

I think that if we really what people

are worried about is that knowing about

neurotransmitters like oxytocin

will take the mystery out of love.

That day is a long, long way into the future,

I don’t think we have anything to worry about.